


Saturn Take His Throne Again

by lady_daedalus



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Aarne-Thompson Type 830: The Boastful Deer-slayer, Fairy Tale Elements, Fluff and Angst, Love at First Sight, M/M, Nagisa family values, Star-crossed, Thompson Motif A753.1: Moon as Wooer, deer prince moon prince, pretentious tags are pretentious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21734671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_daedalus/pseuds/lady_daedalus
Summary: For Adam's murder, at his siblings' behest, Kaworu is sent to take Shinji's life. At Kaworu's behest, Shinji takes his heart.
Relationships: Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu
Comments: 34
Kudos: 84





	1. Brightest of my children dear, earth-born and sky-engendered

**Author's Note:**

> The Princess Mononoke/Killing of a Sacred Deer-Iphigenia in Aulis fairytale AU mashup that nobody asked for. Kaworu is the reincarnation of a forest god, Shinji is the son of the man who shot him in his previous life.

In an uncharted expanse in the depths of the forest, a massive ginkgo tree had, over time, showered down torrents’ worth of its perpetually autumnal leaves like scales shed from an ancient beast even older than Adam himself. These leaves had proved a potent fertilizer to the surrounding flora, and all around, golden offshoots staked the ginkgo’s claim on the territory. Now, for the first time, they would provide nourishment for fauna as well.

For the past day, Adam had tilled the soil with his antlers to make a flowerbed of sorts. He took great care in pulling up a section of the root network with his teeth, making sure not to break any of these precious veins that would deliver the forest’s lifeblood to its new inhabitant. The branches of the trees would have raked at the hide of any other being that had somehow grown as tall as Adam, but they yielded to him and let him work in peace. Even the sinking of the sun couldn’t deter him; he just continued by the light of his halo, for he was known to the deerfolk and humans alike as the creature who held the moon between his antlers. After he’d dug a pit that he deemed wide and deep enough, there was nothing left to do but wait.

A few days later, the ground about the ginkgos trembled and leaves were disturbed from their resting place when Adam’s antlers, his first shed in a long time and leadlike in their weight, hit the forest floor. He took a few moments to survey the area and make sure that the impact hadn’t damaged any of the trees, then he nudged the antlers into the pit with the still tender crown of his head. Their elegant prongs contrasted with the tangled, gnarled roots in which they nested. Adam covered this sylvan still life with several bales’ worth of ginkgo leaves before he returned the soil back to the earth from whence it came. Another bed of leaves was spread over the top for good measure, and then he finally allowed himself to rest atop it. The carpeting of foliage around the pit had been completely razed, and bald, brown earth was exposed to the gentle sunlight.

It was here that Adam served as sentinel during the coming months. The earth he’d laid bare slowly acquired new leaf layers like a wound growing back its skin, and he lay still all the while, the occasional twitching of his ears and eyes the only sign of life. He remained stalwart against the wind and rain, when soaked leaves trembled down off their branches to adhere to his mud-flecked coat. Neither could lightning move him when it struck and felled a neighboring tree one night. The trunk crashed down with an amplified version of the one Adam’s own antlers had produced not too long ago.

Only on the final week did Adam begin to move again, and even then, it was only to pace in circles around the perimeter of the pit. His snowy hide, glistening with dew and rain, made a ghost out of him in the nighttime.

His antlers had already begun to grow back in when he finally peeked back into the pit where his old ones lay, and under the layers of faded forest tissue something was stirring. Rustling movements beneath the camouflage revealed a nose here, an eye there. Adam leapt into the pit, which was barely big enough to contain him, and he began to push aside the soil to uncover the new life that he’d been protecting all these lonely months. It didn’t take long until a black fawn was winding its way around his legs, its dusky coat and the skin beneath having grown around the skeletal frame of Adam’s antlers.

Adam helped to push the fawn out of the pit with his head, and after that, his first priority was to guide it to the nearest body of water large enough to reflect the entire moon. The fawn lapped up the diluted holy water, and when it had gotten used to the taste, Adam tilted his head to pour out pure moonlight from his halo for the fawn to drink. Then, in no time at all, he was trotting back out from seclusion with his first angel, Sachiel, in tow.

Much was made of Sachiel’s arrival. The deerfolk left the fawn offerings of enchanted fruit to fortify him, and they anointed the crown of his head with magical poultices to help his antlers grow strong that he might protect them in turn. Adam imparted to him from day one the importance of this duty, and as he was introducing Sachiel to the subjects and domain that would be his, he brought Sachiel to a copse full of towering trees, all covered in arrows. The arrowheads were rusted over in varying degrees, a mark of the time they’d been there exposed to the elements. Beneath all the rust, though, the first coat with which they’d been painted was blood from all the times that Adam had been shot protecting the forest. One day, he explained, Sachiel would choose his own spot of the forest and collect his own trophies as proof of his devotion to the deerfolk. So take care of your antlers, Adam told him, because they are both your crown and the weapon by which you serve.

Sachiel’s antlers grew like weeds, and the rest of him was soon to follow. Like Adam, it took much longer for his to shed than the average deer’s, though unlike Adam, his couldn’t create any new beings. After some experimentation, however, they found that his sheds did have a special property: any weapons created from them never missed the target. Sachiel cycled through antlers, providing plenty of arms for the deerfolk to defend themselves over the years, and he still continued to grow. He finally measured about half as tall as his father, which was still enough to put him head and shoulders above the rest.

Then one day, Sachiel noticed that Adam was carrying his head low, like his antlers were yoking his neck to the ground. He’d also begun to rub the side of his head against the ground and against tree trunks in irritation like he was trying to knead away a headache. Watching this, Sachiel knew, in the marrow of his bones that had been made from Adam, that soon there was going to be another one of him. He told Adam through their familial bond that he would take good care of the forest while Adam was away, and Adam disappeared not long afterward.

The following months were uneventful, if a little lonely. Ordinary deerfolk, with their spoken language and the humanlike forms that they would occasionally assume, would always be alien to him. But he dutifully warded off predators, animal and, for the first time, human. On a warm afternoon he’d heard the wail of one of his subjects pierce the air, so far away that he was the only one who could detect it. At the scene, he found one of the deerfolk with an arrow in his flank and whose distress was such that he was unable to assume his humanoid form, which might have discouraged the encroaching poachers. But when the humans beheld Sachiel and gazed into his lightless eyes, they beheld him with the same fear with which people had for years only beheld Adam on the rare nights that he could be glimpsed. They’d fled, but one had retained his faculties long enough to shoot another arrow into Sachiel’s side.

Sachiel returned to the depths of the forest carrying the wounded boy across his large shoulders. The arrow was still embedded in his side, and his antlers were still bloody. After Sachiel deposited the boy someplace where he would be looked after, he made his way to a secluded spot where he licked the wound around the arrow, waiting for Adam.

Adam returned the next morning with Sachiel’s first sibling, Shamshel, following at his heels. When Adam gave Shamshel the lesson about their duty as members of the forest’s nobility, he punctuated the lesson by taking all three of them to the copse of arrows. He selected a set of trees apart from his own and marked it as Sachiel’s. Then he stabbed Sachiel’s first trophy into the bark of one of them, where the wound, in recognition, bled sap the same dark color as their blood.

This routine became the norm for Adam and his children. Every few decades, it would come time for him to disappear again, and then he would come back with a new sibling for Sachiel and the others to raise alongside him. Generations of deerfolk would be born and die within their lifetimes, but the only change in their family was that there were more of them as the years progressed. The arrow-pocked section of the forest expanded like its very own collective tree trunk, gaining more and more rings expanding out from its center with age. Every time one of the angels made their first kill in service of the forest, they were officially welcomed into the family, though it was understood between all of them that they were not to go out in search of confrontation; the call had to come to them naturally. Some of them were more eager than others. Sandalphon in particular had been an especially late bloomer in this regard; Adam had practically needed to push him out of the nest.

All of the angels had the same dark coloring, with the exception of piebald Israfel. Like Adam, none of them had been seen in human form. It had been widely rumored for a long time that perhaps Adam didn’t even have one, because he was from a time before the deerfolk had acquired such forms. Whatever the reason, the one thing that _was_ clear about the entire situation was that Adam wasn’t about to reveal any of his secrets. Nobody, including his children, was to know where he hid his human form, and neither were they to know why, after so many lifetimes of solitude, he’d only relatively recently begun to create the angels. Perhaps Adam had sensed something changing in the air, and some ethereal component of the atmosphere reacted with something inside his body, transmitting the message that the forest would soon be in need of more guardians.

His instincts proved right when, after producing fourteen angels in total, he was finally brought low pushing his children out of a bullet’s path. Behind him lay a wake of trees whose spines he had snapped in his haste to reach them. It was a level of destruction he’d never before committed, and his body was soon to endure destruction of the same effect. The bullets lodged too far inside him and crushed too many bones with their blunt force for him to recover. When he fell to the earth and he could feel his earthly form beginning to leave him, he took one last look at the angels flocking to his side. Sandalphon and Sahaquiel both lay with him, immobilized in the mire that formed when his blood spilled onto the soil, bleeding from multiple wounds in their sides. Israfel had been struggling to get away but ultimately had been too weak, and she’d hid herself behind her father’s massive body, quivering. Ramiel, Zeruel, and Sachiel were the only ones in sight who were still hale and standing. The other angels had either fled or were stranded in other, disparate parts of the forest. 

When the bullet wounds in Adam’s lungs forced his last breath out and he finally expired, the last thing he did was swear that the humans would never touch his children. That day was the first and only time that anybody witnessed anything close to a human form emerging from his body. His magic flowed upward into the sky, and consolidated into a giant figure made of light as it escaped its earthly prison. The giant looked down upon his children and the humans surrounding them, but none of them could return his gaze because the rest of him was too blinding. He illuminated the dark forest so that it was as bright as daytime, like the midnight sun in winter at the northernmost corners of the earth.

Then the light went out again, leaving everybody blinded, but this time in darkness. When Adam left, he took the moon with him. Whatever mysterious valences had held his form together hadn’t been strong enough to last, and the dissolution of his body blanketed the entire forest in mist. The dampness rendered the majority of the humans’ matchlock rifles useless.

Gendo Ikari heard the crashing sound of Sachiel’s body falling over onto its side as if overcome by a sudden onslaught of disease. He headed toward the source of the noise, and his rifle was still dry enough to take one more shot before it too would be put out. However, when he shot, the sound of the bullet’s impact was that of metal meeting the anvil. Something flickered like sheet lightning in front ofSachiel’s body when the bullet made contact. Sachiel began to get to his feet, and Gendo, whose eyes had just started to accustom themselves to the darkness once more, could barely see through the mist the gleam of Sachiel’s new, sharp teeth. He ran, so he wasn’t able to witness the emergence of a new skull growing like a tumor, parasitically conjoined, from the side of Sachiel’s neck.

All throughout the forest, Adam’s magic was affecting the other angels as its tide swept over them, poisoned with the hatred Adam had felt before he died. One by one, the sounds of the angels falling like columns could be heard before their monstrous forms began to manifest. Israfel experienced the same second face pushing out from beneath her skin like Sachiel’s, but hers continued to sprout into a second head, complete with a brainstem of its own. Leliel’s skin peeled away, leaving only the absence of light in the shape of a deer standing where her body had been. Near the sea, Gaghiel, Sandalphon, and Shamshel threw themselves into the water, whereupon their bodies merged into a hydra mass, and that was only the beginning.

It rained for days and days following Adam’s death. Entire areas of the forest flooded, and fish could be seen swimming above ground in the ankle-deep water. Their scales flashed in what little light there was. The angels had intended to burn his body atop a pyre made of his trophies, but that was no longer possible in this deluge. Instead, Sachiel and a few of his other large siblings hauled Adam’s body across their oxen backs to the plot of earth from which they had all emerged, promising that he was not to touch the ground until they lowered him into his burial spot. The rest of the angels followed behind in their wake, and even Gaghiel, Sandalphon, and Shamshel heaved their combined body out of the water to slither their way into the cavalcade. Already their hooves had flattened into webbed, clawed feet, and the heavy rain washed away their fur in patches to reveal scales scabbing over the exposed skin. Ramiel and a few others remained behind, putting up their new shields to deter any other forest creatures from intruding on this sacred procession. They stood, unmoving, in the rain, like Adam had done for them while he had waited for them to be born so many years ago.

As it currently was, the pit was too small to lay Adam in, so the angels who weren’t serving as pallbearers began to bow their heads and churn up the earth. Their necks ached as they pushed away sodden soil and clay, and the clay coated their antlers, which weighted them down further. Finally, after much drudgery, Sachiel and the other pallbearers were able to reverently lower Adam’s body into the ground. They made sure that there was plenty of room for his antlers to nestle. Then, with the flood having washed away the golden leaves that had been their swaddling, they had no choice but to cover his body back up with the clay, hoping all the while that the earth could be considered blessed enough for him. They tried to ensure that the dirt wasn’t packed too tightly, so that if anything grew from his body, it wouldn’t drown in the earth. Then they all lay down around Adam’s grave in a protective circle.

After seven days, the rain finally lifted. The angels decided that it was time they returned to their everyday duties of protecting the deerfolk, because now they would need to help rebuild and find new homes for everyone after the flood. One, they decided, ought to remain by Adam’s side at all times to ward off scavengers. They selected Sahaquiel for the job, because after her transformation, her body was overlaid with hundreds of blinking eyes that enabled her to see in any direction and forgo the need for sleep. She kept a portion of her eyes pointed at the grave at all times to check for signs of life. Days passed, then weeks, then months, and nothing shifted the burial mound. Every so often, she would descend into the pit to stir up the soil with her antlers, just to make sure that nothing was suffocating inside. To both her relief and disappointment, nothing ever was. After a year, Sahaquiel began to grow weary of the heartache, and she called upon Sachiel to replace her.

As his first child, Sachiel felt such a strong connection to Adam that even before his sharp deer senses picked up on the thing burrowing its way out of the grave, he could sense the change in his marrow and antlers. This feeling he knew to be Adam; the humming inside him and the static in the air were unmistakably his. Before he approached the pit, he snapped his head back and forth, searching every corner of the area to see if any of them might be harboring an impostor. The spell broke, though, when he heard a crying sound that was certainly coming from within the pit.

He peered over the ledge, and in the brief time that he and Sahaquiel hadn’t been looking, a small white fawn with identical coloring to Adam had broken its way through its earthen shell to the surface. Half of Adam's skeleton was also visible now, and the bones were somehow so white and clean that they looked sun-bleached. The fawn roaming among the bones was much, much smaller than any of Adam’s other children had been, and when it spotted Sachiel, it began crying louder for his attention. Sachiel realized then the cause of the crying; because the fawn was so small, it couldn’t climb out of the pit by itself. It would run up against the side and try to jump only to slide back down, and on its white fur a light dusting of dirt had accumulated.

Sachiel jumped into the pit, very careful not to crush the new life that it had borne. The fawn, upon catching Sachiel’s scent, seemed overjoyed with recognition that this was his sibling, and it wound itself around and around Sachiel’s legs in happiness. It barely came up to his fetlock. Sachiel tried to communicate with it, but found that the bond he shared with his siblings was absent between him and this new, mysterious creature. The fawn only continued to look at him with its large, trusting eyes, and it didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. Sachiel supposed that since it had never known such a connection, there was nothing for it to grieve in that sense.

For the first time in his long life, Sachiel willed his body to take on a form that approximated a human’s. This way, he would still have to mind his antlers, but the bulk of his body would not be an issue. He was still much larger than any ordinary human, and the closest approximation of skin that he could create was tree bark, and all four of his eyes remained hollow as ever, but this didn’t change the fawn’s eagerness to meet him in the slightest. Sachiel ducked so that his antlers wouldn’t tangle with Adam’s ribcage as he reached down to pick up the new baby. He gathered it up in his spindly, shadowy limbs, and he tilted his head to pour out some rare moonlight into his cupped palm for the fawn to drink. Then, cradling the fawn, he slowly lowered himself down to sit with his new sibling in his arms, basking in the short time that it would know him as its only protector.

Holding the fawn like this, Sachiel was able to inspect it more closely. With the hand he wasn’t using to support it, he began to brush the caked-on dirt off of its coat with a single finger, revealing an almost imperceptible pattern of petal-pink spots upon the fawn's back. The spots matched the sclera of its eyes, which were a miniature version of Adam’s. Sachiel saw much of these as well as its comparably pink nose, because the fawn kept turning its head up to look at him and press little wet nose kisses to its new sibling, duckling tail wagging all the while. It made itself comfortable in Sachiel’s lap, content to be stroked and wordlessly adored, laying in the cool, damp earth beneath the striped shadows of its progenitor’s ribs. Sachiel, who was as unpracticed in spoken language as he was in transformation, made alien cooing noses at the fawn that sounded faintly like the warbling of doves. 

After the sun had gone through one cycle of setting and rising again, Sachiel woke the fawn and placed him aside so that he could return to his deer form. The fawn had already grown stronger from the moonlight, ready to stand on its own for longer periods of time. It seemed antsy to set out for the wider world. Sachiel lowered his neck so that the fawn could climb into the protective basket of his antlers, and then he slowly raised his head again to let it loose upon the forest. It ran to and fro, rejoicing in the sun-dappled ground, so much more appealing and welcoming than the harsh prison of his father’s skeleton. Sachiel tried to communicate with it once more for good measure, but it seemed that the fawn hadn’t matured enough for that yet.

It wasn’t long before the fawn collapsed onto the forest floor from both the exertion and the excitement, but its eyes were still bright and hungry for more life. Sachiel knelt down to allow it to climb across his shoulders, and when he rose he took great pains not to jostle his precious cargo. Then he set off at a slow pace, so smooth that the fawn nearly fell asleep atop its perch from the gentle rhythm of Sachiel’s shoulders shifting like a rocking crib. Sachiel knew his siblings must be getting worried, but he waited to turn his connection to them back on, because he didn’t want to spoil the impact of the good news by transmitting any images of the fawn to his family. He carried the child into the daylight himself, and then finally bade the rest of the angels to come see their new brother.

_It’s because he’s made from Adam’s organs,_ Ireul conveyed to Sachiel one day when they had finally introduced the fawn, whom they’d named Tabris, to his aquatic siblings. The triple heads of Sandalphon, Gaghiel, and Shamshel jutted out of the sea, marking the stretch of shallow water where Tabris was learning to swim, paddling happily from one head to the next. When he would approach one, that head would sink a little below the surface, forming a little island where Tabris could take breaks.

Shortly before their visit, Ireul had used her special talent for absorbing herself into the terrain to investigate the root network around Adam’s burial site. The day that Sachiel had brought Tabris home, one of the things that had puzzled all of them was the fact that Adam’s skeleton — including his antlers — had remained completely unaltered and pristine. Ireul went to get a feel for the soil, and there was a residual tang of blood that the nearby roots had soaked up and stored inside. The very faintest concentration of it had run up into the trees’ veins and all the way into their leaves as they fed off his body. That soil, Ireul concluded, must have mixed with Adam’s organs while they decomposed, until the mixture coalesced like a pearl to form the fawn before them.

 _That’s why he can’t talk to us through our bond,_ she said. _He’s fundamentally made from a different part of Adam. Might also be why he’s not as sturdy. He’s softer._

Then, thought Sachiel, Tabris wasn’t just another angel. He was made of Adam’s heart, and his lungs. The anger stored in Adam’s vented spleen as he died had all gone out into the air, so that’s why Tabris didn’t seem as angry as the rest of them. In him were all of the wonderful, vulnerable parts that had allowed Adam to create the way he did out of the love he’d had for the natural world, and the pride he took in his followers, and his desire to protect them at all costs. There was some satisfaction to that. Those parts of him hadn’t gone to waste after all.

 _I don’t think we’re going to get another angel,_ said Ireul. _I think all the magic left in Adam’s body went into making him._

So be it, thought Sachiel.

The head that was Gaghiel’s swanned over on its long neck to bring Tabris back to shore. Tabris shook off the water, making a little mist as he did so, and then he preoccupied himself for a while getting irritated at the sand that clumped in his fur. He tried to push it off with his nose, but just ended up sneezing.

 _We have to do something about the communication problem,_ said Ireul. She melted into the sand and re-emerged at Tabris’s side to nuzzle him. _What are you thinking about?_ Sachiel could hear her saying to him, a little mournfully. _What’s going on in that mind of yours? How are we supposed to tell you that you have all these siblings who love you until the end of the world?_

As if he had understood her on some unspoken level that ran even deeper than the usual angelic mental connection, Tabris’s body answered her wishes. He sneezed again, and transformed into a human.

There was no getting around the fact that the angels would have to share Tabris with the rest of the deerfolk someday, but now there was the added chagrin that he’d have to be in regular contact with at least a few of them so that he could learn language. The angels guarded Tabris jealously during his welcoming ceremony, surrounding him in circular formation, kneeling down, and locking antlers to form a protective cage around him. Tabris didn’t like the feeling of being locked in again, and even his siblings could tell by his behavior that he was starting to get irritated with them. Reluctantly, they let him go to mingle with his adoring subjects, but their bond twinged every time somebody else touched him, or was even so bold as to lift him into their arms (even if Tabris did invite them to do it), or accept his pink-nosed kisses.

They waited with bated breath for the moment Tabris would finally reveal to the rest of the deerfolk his new shape, and the fanfare when he did made them a little uncomfortable. When the deerfolk anointed and christened him with their poultices, oils, and more than the usual offerings (for he was, after all, Adam resurrected rather than just one of his offspring), their fingers lingered a little too long on Tabris’s smooth human forehead for the angels’ liking. It was only with great pain that they finally admitted through their spokesperson Armisael (after greedily hoarding Tabris back into their fold) that because of this unforeseen development, Tabris would be needing lessons in human speech. There was much clamor when they announced this, with many people scrambling over one another to offer their services. The angels coldly declared that they would not be making the decision tonight, nor would they make it in public, nor would anybody else be privy to the decision-making process. Then they whisked Tabris away again, though Tabris brayed in protest as they did so. In the end, they chose one of their higher-ranking priestesses, since the clergy were all highly educated. Tabris learned the languages and dialects of the surrounding regions, and their formal language through written scripture and texts from the outside while he grew up. The angels were thrilled to find that he actually could understand the things they told him through their bond; he’d just been locked inside his incompatible body, unable to respond.

His antlers came in slowly, like wisdom teeth. One of the first things he ever said to his siblings using his human tongue was a complaint about how his head hurt from the pressure. This prompted an entirely new wave of anxieties about how Tabris was still being a late bloomer, and maybe his antlers were growing so slowly because they were too big for his head and couldn’t get out, and was his head going to be able to withstand it? But they grew in healthy, and he was so proud of them that he kept them manifested, even in the human form in which, in his siblings’ opinion, he’d gotten a little too comfortable.

After fifteen years, Tabris shed his first pair of antlers. His siblings celebrated, and they talked to him about all the things they could carve on his new antlers for his coronation when they came in. On that birthday, they also bore him off to the copse where all their trophies were, including Adam’s, and they explained to him the arrows’ significance in low voices.

 _This is the next rite of passage,_ they said. _We all had to do it; you will have to do it too, someday. Then you will be truly inducted into this family._

“Oh,” said Tabris. “I hope it will not be anytime soon.”

 _It may not be,_ they said. _You will live for a very long time. But no matter what happens, even if it should be tomorrow, you had best prepare your heart and mind from this moment onward._

Miles away, in a village not too far from the forest’s border, Gendo Ikari’s son received his first firearm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anybody who follows me on tumblr: You know how I've been spamming you with all those deer pics tagged with some variation of "deer prince au?? deer prince au???". This is that deer prince AU. Sorry about that. Both fic and chapter titles come from *in the voice of jason momoa's aquaman* MY MAN John Keats's poem [ "Hyperion." ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion)
> 
> The Southern Reach Trilogy changed my life, and if you open your heart, it can change yours too. I wasn't too keen on Annihilation's movie adaptation, but [ that bear](https://bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/annihilation-bear.jpg) was so good I needed to crib its design for saggy eel in this fic. 
> 
> Not since That Fic have I come up with an AU that's this worthy of my grace.


	2. The edge of age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I did come here wanting to take these back,” said Tabris. “But I want something else now.” 
> 
> Or: the "don't worry, things start getting gay in this chapter" chapter.

Shinji’s first hunting trip had been disastrous.

It had been his and Asuka’s first chance at a live target after splintering apart countless (or at least countless to him; surely Asuka would know the exact number) wooden dummies, but he never had managed to steel his nerves. Now, his jumpy trigger finger had cost him not only what little credibility he’d had, but also cost Asuka her first kill, which he was certain she wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

“You absolute _idiot_ ,” she said.

Shinji wasn’t even paying attention to her. In fact, he was trying not to pay attention to anything, but he was giving the highest priority of ignorance to the deer he’d just struck. He’d shot it in the leg, an animal limb that they’d been taught to skin and dissect, detached from the trunk that had born it. That had been difficult enough to get used to, but seeing that same limb, attached and spasming like a spider’s after it’s been crushed, had been too much for him. He stared at the nearest tree across from them, trying to lose himself in the patterns of its bark, and while he did so he white-knuckled his gun so that the feeling of the wood and metal could contrast the invasive thoughts of deer skin.

“You have to wait until they bend down! Don’t you remember anything?” Asuka said. “You can’t get a clear shot at the thorax until the shoulder moves! Otherwise you just make them suffer.” Shinji heard her thumping her own shoulder for emphasis before her shot put the deer out of its misery.

Shinji allowed his eyes to ease into the sight of the body by following Asuka’s path when she walked over to inspect it.

“I don’t know,” she said, not even deigning to look at him. “Maybe you ought to be in medical instead. I mean, no offense, but everyone can kinda tell that you’re not cut out for this.”

She’d probably (almost definitely) meant it as an insult couched in advice, but Shinji didn’t disagree with her. And his father had given up hunting for research some time ago so, who knew, maybe this would bring them closer together. If he were to be honest with himself, though, he wasn’t sure that notion was as appealing as it ought to be.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said to Asuka, and waited out the rest of their hunting trip in dread.

The next day, he pushed one of his father’s colleagues, Ritsuko, into admitting him into the apothecaries’ ranks. She’d been oddly amenable to his request, maybe because she was surprised that he held any strong opinions at all. The lectures actually weren’t so bad, and even though he and his fellow students were required to copy all of their notes three times over for memorization, he found the repetition soothing. Little by little, he added recipes and techniques to his repertoire, and he felt a sense of accomplishment every time he dressed a wound or mixed a poultice. The sense that he was providing an important community service could even propel him through animal dissections.

Meanwhile, Asuka grew into more of a marksman not just every day, but every night. Ever since the moon had gone out of the sky fifteen years ago and left them all under a heavy shroud come sundown, rats had taken advantage of the dark. Most of the villagers, if they didn’t dread them, at the very least thought them a nuisance. Asuka saw target practice. As Shinji gained modest respect for his healing, Asuka was fast earning a reputation as a capable exterminator with her bow, and it wasn’t long before their circles overlapped. Shinji’s colleagues began to call her in to keep the sickrooms vermin-free, and to his embarrassment, Shinji found himself avoiding interactions with her out of mild jealousy.

The anatomical theater was the arena where she at last defeated him for good. One day, Ritsuko and her colleagues heaved a creature onto the dissection table that, to Shinji and his classmates, was foreign in sight but utterly familiar in concept. It was one of the deerfolk, shot mid-transformation with an arrow through its human thorax. The gasps of Shinji’s classmates swallowed up his own. As Shinji glanced around to take stock of their reactions, it seemed as though none of them could properly marvel at this rare opportunity for fear of the folkloric specters that haunted their communal knowledge.

When the surviving members of the hunting party that killed Adam had returned not just with news of their victory, but a collection of antlers they’d cut from the casualties, they’d set to work the next day thinking of all the kinds of trophies they could fashion. However, all the fruits of their efforts were poisoned. Several people thought to tattoo themselves to commemorate the event, and they made their tools from the antlers. None of the tattoos ever saw completion, because the limbs bearing the designs would rapidly begin to wither away before their owners’ eyes. Upon amputation, they would bleed sap. Anybody who made weapons from the antlers would soon find themselves cut by their own knife, or their arrows falling far short of the mark. Eventually, all the remaining antler fragments were collected and stored away for research, though the exact nature of that research remained vague.

At least, that was, until Gendo appeared one day with a small companion at his side. Rei Ayanami had vellum-pale skin that had to be shielded from the sun at all times lest it burn, and wine-red eyes. She was also, aside from her peculiar coloring, a miniature version of Shinji’s late mother. She was always tagging along, if not with Gendo, then with one of the other researchers like Misato or Ritsuko. In turn, any number of villagers would tag along with her, trying to get her to acknowledge them with conversation, begging the researchers to resurrect their lost ones next. It didn’t matter that Rei never showed any recognition to the faces she’d seen before, or that the extent of her verbal communication was clipped, straightforward speech (“Yes, it is.” “No, I haven’t.”). Everyone wanted to welcome her.

Except Shinji. His skin felt uncomfortable in her uncanny presence. When he interacted with anybody while she was in the room, his speech began to mirror hers, and his jaw would still be clenched long after they parted ways.Fortunately, Gendo was almost never home, which meant that neither was Rei, so these encounters were rare.

He did take some small satisfaction (that he wasn’t proud of) in the fact that, even though she and Gendo were always seen in tandem, with her even helping him and the research team with their experiments, Gendo seemed as emotionally unattached to her as he was to Shinji. But Shinji could never shake the sense of foreboding that followed her.

Looking at the corpse on the dissecting table now, Shinji did his best to resist that same constricting sensation he felt when he was around Rei. He tried to convince himself that whatever punishment was likely on its way might be softened by the fact that Asuka never let her targets suffer. The arrow wound was barely visible; her handiwork was so clean. But then, when the chest was cut open and the well of internal bleeding made external, Shinji decided he couldn’t bear it anymore. As he pushed his way out of the theater, Ritsuko excised several growths from the deer person’s innards, and when she cut them open, their flesh was the flesh of a fruit’s.

The next day, one of the other researchers, Misato, found Shinji scrubbing floors in the sickroom in order to avoid going back to his lectures, and by the end of the day he’d been assigned another role. He had an aptitude for medical botany, Misato had said when she made the case to her colleagues, and if he could neither hunt nor heal, he could still be useful by going out into the forest to gather specimens. He didn’t even mind that they assigned Asuka to accompany him as his defense against whatever lay in wait for him.

Meanwhile, Ritsuko and the other surgeons passed the mysterious fruit on to Gendo and his team. Much to Shinji’s shame, Gendo planted its seeds right in their yard, and Shinji was forced to watch these reminders of his weakness sprout into full-grown trees bearing fruit of their own in the mere span of a year. When he came home, he often had to shoo away wild animals that had come to sample.

Unbeknownst to the villagers, the animals who had eaten the fruit would, over the course of the next twenty-four hours, suffer the same transformation that all of Adam’s children had. Teeth would push their way out of birds’ beaks. Rabbits’ eyes would flash in the night the same way that a wolf’s would. No longer content to poach from gardens, these animals began to pluck the rats from the streets and alleys. Then, the affliction migrated to larger species as the birds and rabbits carried seeds back to the forest, or fell to their natural predators.

One night, the humans were finally made to pay attention when a gigantic boar leapt from the darkness, killed several of the villagers’ livestock, then vanished back into the forest. The only glimpses anyone had caught of it were by the scattered rifle flashes of the few who had been quick to act, including Asuka. The boar returned regularly after that, but in the moonless dark, nobody had yet managed to land the shot to bring it down. Instead, the village learned to adapt to its schedule, and they all went into hiding when they heard the approach of its thunderous footsteps, barring their doors and shuttering their windows.

Eventually, people pieced together that the fruit trees Gendo had been cultivating were the source of their miseries, and they forced him and Shinji to cut them down. Though Gendo complied, he refused to apologize, so Shinji shouldered much of the remorse for both of them. His hands were rubbed raw, first from swinging the axe to fell the trees, then from carrying their remains to the fire in front of the rest of the village. The Ikaris’ house was raided to check for any hidden stashes of seeds, and Shinji waited patiently, a bit listlessly, in the corner while he watched his neighbors ransack his room. Then he was left to put it all back in order himself, the blisters on his hands smarting while he righted all the upturned furniture and strewn books. Rei had not been present for any of this.

Though he wrapped his hands to protect the blisters from infection, he still went nearly sick with worry wondering if he’d contracted the disease just by coming in contact with the fruit. Days passed, though, and he was still himself. He didn’t know whether to be pleased about that or not.

Asuka continued to rack up any infected small game that crossed her path, but the boar eluded her. “It would just be so embarrassing for me if Touji or somebody was the one who ended up killing it,” she said to Shinji during their next foraging trip. She’d been carrying on like this for a while, and at this point, Shinji thought that she probably wanted it to attack them just for the chance to take a shot in decent lighting. He was trying to be patient, though, because if he were in her living situation, maybe he’d have the same attitude.

So, when she moved onto her favorite topic, her mission to kill one of the angels, he refrained from any snide comments about how her father tried that, and look how that turned out. She was probably a better shot than her father was, anyway, he admitted to himself. Although weren’t the angels supposed to have those shields?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” was what he said instead. “People already really like you.”

Asuka paused at this. “You know,” she said, “if we’re ever out here and we run into another deer person, you could take the antlers. I wouldn’t mind telling people it was a joint effort, if that would make you feel better.” Apparently she’d construed the sentiment behind his words as jealousy, though, true to her reputation, she hadn’t been off the mark.

Shinji shrugged. “We probably won’t run into one this far out by the border. I mean, didn’t Ritsuko say that last one was relatively young? I think they were just too young to know better.”

Asuka huffed.

The next time he went out, Shinji slipped away on his own just for some solitude. He actually felt a little bolder without Asuka there to appraise him, and he explored deeper into the forest than he ever had before. He was still close to the border, he reasoned, so the risk of running into anything dangerous remained slim.

Even after he’d already filled his basket, the day still had some light left in it, and he found he still had some adventure left in him, so he took some more time solely to explore. Exploration gave way to admiration; unburdened like this, he noticed the warmth and lushness of the grass underfoot, and how the sunlight seemed so much richer in this atmosphere, almost heady in its radiance. The intermittent spotlights it made as it broke through the canopy illuminated the scrollwork of ivy running along the ground and up the trees. The network of delicate vines, glowing in the soft light, brought to life the filigree designs one might find in the margins of a holy text.

Then, in this sequestered, sacred place, he saw the bolder curve of an antler upon the forest floor. It wasn’t like any of the vulgar samples he’d seen at home; its creamy surface was sleek and flawless, and each tine was a graceful, calligraphic brushstroke of a line. Even as he bent to touch it, hypnotized, it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t be doing this, maybe the mere trace of his fingerprints upon it would defile it. And yet, once he made contact, he couldn’t stop touching. When he ran a fingertip along the main beam, it was like he’d played a chord on some soundless instrument whose frequency nevertheless resonated with something inside him.

After a guilty glance to either side, he seized the antler and ran. Behind him, Ireul materialized from her hiding spot among the ivy.

“You’re doing so well!” Tabris congratulated the young buck who was currently lying with its head across his lap. Its eyes were closed in relaxation from Tabris’s fingers massaging around its pedicles. Initially, however, they’d been closed so that it didn’t have to see the bloody pieces of deer velvet accumulating in the bowl at Tabris’s side. It had come to him in search of comfort because this was its first pair of antlers, and the sight of the other bucks’ peeling velvet, strips dangling red from blood-stained racks, had frightened it.

Tabris had had the same problem when he’d witnessed his first antler cycle. He and his siblings’ perfectly symmetrical antlers, which crowned even his sisters to mark their status, grew over periods of years instead of shedding annually. As such, the velvet shedding that prefaced the antler shedding soon to come was a foreign concept to him. The blood had sent him into a shock at the time, so he was well equipped to provide comfort to his subjects currently experiencing the same.

“Last one,” said Tabris, rubbing his thumb behind the buck’s ear as he slipped the last piece of velvet off its tines. It was as smooth as removing a glove. He placed it in the bowl with the other scraps, which would eventually be used to make medicine, and then he washed the residual blood away from the fresh antlers as he praised the buck for its patience.

“You were so brave,” he said as he dried the antlers off with a cloth. “Now go get them carved. Whoever you chose is going to be honored; these came in really beautifully.” He gave the buck an “all better” kind of kiss on its snout, then patted the side of its head to let it know that it was free to go. While he watched it bound away to find the one it had chosen to carve its antlers, Tabris fondly ran his fingers along his own fresh carvings.

This year, his antlers had grown back just enough that they were beginning their gentle curve forward again. After he’d shed his first pair several years ago, he and his family decided together that his siblings would take turns carving them. Carving season was the only time of the year that Tabris saw their anthropomorphous forms, which they adopted for the all-too-brief minutes they spent engraving his blank antlers with their own razor-like claws. These minutes made Tabris appreciate even further the care Sachiel must have taken not to hurt him with those claws when they met.

 _Tabris_ , said Ireul’s voice beside him as her body manifested from the earth, _have you finished?_

“Yes,” he said, showing her the bowl of velvet. “I was just going to take it to one of the priests.”

 _You can leave it here; they’ll find it. The rest of your siblings want to see you at the temple now._ She bent her head to offer Tabris her antler.

Tabris felt heavy all of a sudden, because he could read the omens in her voice. Without saying another word, he looped his arms around one of her tines and allowed her to pull him to his feet. He’d barely gained his footing when she began to depart, and he took a running start before he leapt into his deer form to follow her.

Since Tabris wasn’t old enough to have a temple of his own, Ireul guided him to Ramiel’s, which was the nearest. Inside, Ramiel’s stone likeness was missing its head. The angels’ followers had smashed it with hammers after the flood eighteen years ago, though not as an act of sacrilege, but rather as a gesture of respect for her new form. Ramiel had emerged from her transformation with nothing but a perpetually shifting, prismatic halo suspended between a pair of disembodied antlers. Now, under the vespertine sky, it stood out amongst her siblings’ own static halos surrounding her. At the apex of their awaiting circle stood Sachiel.

 _Tabris_ , said the angels after Ireul urged him into their ranks, _Your time is come._

In the past, every time his siblings alluded to this day, Tabris’s face fell into a blank expression. Unlike the majority of them, he had never anticipated its arrival. He much preferred the kind of care he’d been performing not an hour before, offering solace and refuge from fear, and healing if need be. But at the same time, he knew he couldn’t forgive himself if he had to tend to the wounded who had been wounded due to his refusal to act.

“Is that so?” he asked flatly. “And why is that?”

 _Somebody has stolen your first shed,_ said Sachiel, and Tabris knew by their sympathetic humming that his siblings could see his heart break. He had loved those first antlers so well, so it was telling that he could still say, “Whoever it was, they can have it. I don’t mind.” If nobody had been hurt but him, and if the hurt was only psychological, he thought, then there was no reason for retaliation.

_What makes you say that?_

“They probably need it really badly. Maybe they're sick and they think it can help them.”

 _Even you do not know what your antlers are capable of,_ said Ramiel, pawing at the ground in frustration. It was true. Tabris’s first antlers had remained unused ever since he’d shed them, because nobody wanted to lose whatever magic they might hold by processing them improperly.

 _You don’t know that your antlers heal,_ Bardiel, whose own sheds made powerful medicines, continued. _They certainly don’t. This means that they only stole it to steal it. Those antlers are of your body. You grew them yourself. They are like your first creation. Doesn’t it anger you to know that they’re taking a piece of you for a prize?_

“It does,” said Tabris. “But isn’t graciousness a noble quality to possess? You all are the ones who told me that I would live for a long time, remember? So I’ll have many more. I probably won’t even miss these after a while.”

 _Very well,_ said Sachiel, pacing. _If that won’t convince you, then what about that boy who was shot last year? No one ever avenged his death._

They had hooked him now, and he began to squirm. “Why should that be my responsibility?” he asked, though he felt repugnant for saying so, and he knew that they knew it.

Ever since Adam’s death, that night that he promised to never let the humans touch them, the angels had been unable to leave the forest and its adjacent sea. Last year, by the time they heard that one of their people had been killed, that person had already been carted away and laid out on the altar of the anatomical theater. The angels mourned him for weeks, and Tabris knew that to this day, that failure to protect him was always on their collective mind.

Since Tabris had been born after Adam’s curse, he would be the only one among them who could freely leave.

 _You’re right,_ said Sachiel. _We should have sent you then. There are a lot of things we should have done differently, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still try to make them right._

Tabris felt very self conscious of his engraved antlers just then. “I see,” he said. “I have to get myself ready, then.”

 _When you do,_ said his siblings, _you’ll have something waiting for you. Think of it as a belated birthday present._

Tabris left the temple grounds and waited until he was out of his siblings’ sight to cry.

When he returned to them, there lay a dagger in the middle of their circle. It actually didn’t look out of place there amongst the flowers. It was regal, ceremonial, and the white flowers upon which they’d laid it were like the cushion upon which they were presenting it to him so that he might do the augurs. The ivory appearance lent it an air of sophistication and softened it as well, because its curved blade lacked the threatening glint of metal.

“Is this my gift, then?” said Tabris.

 _This,_ said Sachiel, _is made from Adam’s antler, and so it is what’s rightfully yours._

 _Take it,_ Ramiel urged. _It’s your birthright. Nobody else but you should have a piece of Adam._

“Who made it?” Tabris asked, ignoring their prompts.

 _We did,_ said his siblings. _All of us contributed. See, there are the carvings upon the blade, since we cannot all carve your antlers yet._

Tabris finally picked it up, still refusing to take the hilt and holding it with both of his palms facing up. Indeed, there were his siblings’ intricate carvings and inscriptions. He ran his index finger along the side of the blade, and the edge was as innocuous as it appeared; it drew no blood at this slight provocation. The angels had not designed this knife to make a clean cut.

“It seems dull,” he said.

 _We won’t lie to you, Tabris,_ said Sandalphon. _It’s going to be very brutal because you will have to use a lot of force. We did that intentionally. But if you will have enough strength if you can just summon it._

 _Another thing about this dagger,_ said Sachiel, _is that it will know when blood has been spilt upon it, so we will know if you have returned to us without completing your task._

“How can it sense that?” asked Tabris.

 _You will know when you commit the act,_ said Israfel.

“I see,” Tabris said again, his voice just as hollow as he had the last time he said it.

 _Do you really see?_ asked Ireul.

Because his siblings couldn’t read his thoughts like they could one another’s, they’d always had trouble reconciling the times that Tabris said something and meant another, even if only slightly. They thought it was a bad habit he’d picked up as a result of the form he’d chosen. _Why do you bend your words, Tabris?_ they’d asked. _Why can you not just say what you mean?_ When Tabris insisted that it wasn’t lying, and that they had only to read between the words, they said, _Why toy with us like that in the first place, though?_

 _Tabris,_ said Sahaquiel, _This is not the time for you to hide things from us. You can say that you see all you like, but this is a very important matter, alright? We want to trust you to take care of us like you trust us to take care of you._

“I know,” said Tabris.

 _I wish it did not have to be this way,_ said Sachiel.

“I know. I’m ready.”

Then Tabris let each of his siblings approach him one by one to press their foreheads against his.

The ashlike powder ground from Leliel’s antlers, which his siblings had blown into his face before he left, granted him temporary invisibility as he journeyed into the wild unknown of civilization. He’d spent a little while simply regarding the village from afar, although he was conscious of each second that passed, another grain of sand suffocating his heart. The sound and moving mass of a boar crashing past him finally uprooted him from his spot. It was not only the beast’s quick appearance that surprised him, though. In the wind it created with its sheer speed, the scent that reached Tabris was unlike anything he’d smelled on any forest dweller before.

From its hide, Tabris could see several arrows protruding. Their shape and the way they altered the boar’s stride shot him through with phantom pains of arrows piercing his own skin in his past life. He cried out and stumbled, clasping his hands to his thigh to staunch a nonexistent wound. Then, something strange happened. His fear, which he imagined as another self, and which he’d previously felt was holding him back, began to chase him. He took his deer form and sprinted away from it, thankful for the distraction the boar was providing so he could run alongside the houses with his footfalls unnoticed.

His mind frantically scanned the passing homes for any sign of his shed, and at last, he caught the faintest strains of its ringing presence calling out to him. He followed the sound, transforming back into his human form and ducking through the alleys, wincing when he upturned something in the darkness, until he came to the wall of the house barricading him from his antler. Breathing heavily, he flattened his palms against the wall and quickly walked his way around the perimeter in search of the door before Leliel’s magic could wear off. With the last of her shadow magic remaining on him, he willed the door open as soon as he found it, hopefully trapping his fear outside.

He gave himself a few moments to catch his breath, and he knew he should have been using the time to also take stock of the house’s interior, but he didn’t want to. He just wanted to find his shed and leave, and then think about how to handle the dagger later. The antler wasn’t anywhere in the immediate room; he could tell by the sound. Its echoes were weak in this part of the house, and he could feel them reverberating more strongly within the hallway ahead. He walked, touching his toes to the floorboards first like a dancer to minimize his noise, letting his halo light his way.

The ringing was coming from a bedroom, he discovered, as he peeked around the corner from which it emanated. Because the ringing was perceptible only to him, the figure he spotted in the bed remained fast asleep. Tabris’s eyes darted around for the sound’s source, beginning with the walls. Curiously, he couldn’t find his antler mounted there. Then, he located the trunk in the corner.

He crept to its side and lifted the lid, inch by torturous inch, to find the piece of him. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the sleeper remained submerged in his dream, and when Tabris judged that he did, he reached his arm into the trunk to extract what belonged to him.

His heart nearly sighed when he lifted his antler out. He cradled it in his arms, the motion a vague memory of the parental instinct Adam had carried within him, as though this antler, too, could sprout a new deer if Tabris just nourished it and handled it gently enough. He stroked the main beam that, had this been his previous life, would have been the new creature’s backbone. Then, moved by this parental impulse, he felt a vicious urge to protect this not-child, and to eliminate the dormant predator nearby.

Tabris still held the shed against his body with one arm when he stood gazing down at the human in his bed. He wondered if this was how Adam had felt when he looked down at his subjects. With his free hand, he drew the dagger out of his sleeve. The surface of its blade was warm from his body heat, but the lines of the carvings remained steel-cold, like his siblings had engraved them in ice. The entire time, Tabris remained cognizant of his breath.

 _You want to breathe so slowly,_ his siblings had told him, _that you won’t even leave any trace of your presence in the air._

They had also said, _It has to be through the heart._ That’s why he remained fixed where he stood; he couldn’t get a clear shot to the human’s heart the way he was sleeping. After some agonizing, he came to the conclusion that he would probably have to first stab the human through the ribs, then through the heart when he tried to run. He felt queasy, and he nearly exhaled too hard trying to calm himself down. He pressed one of the points of his antler into his fingertip to remind himself of his purpose.

He pressed too hard. He’d only intended for it to be a pinch, akin to the way one pinches oneself to see if they’re in a dream. But he was so nervous that he ended up cutting the skin of his finger, and he gasped.

The human woke up, and, when Tabris looked into his dark eyes, the imitation love he’d felt for the imitation child (really, even less than a doll to him now than he thought about it) was completely dwarfed by the very real love he felt for the very real person before him.

Tabris, though he was young, knew very much about love. His siblings enveloped him with it every day, had done so since the day he was born of the love Adam had for all of them. This was a very different sort of love, he could already tell, but the reaction it caused in his body was nearly identical to the way his body acknowledged the painful, joyous bonds that tied him so soundly to his siblings when he thought of them. Thus, even though he wasn’t familiar with this type of affection yet, he knew enough about the sensation to know that one was not supposed to fear the one they loved.

And in this moment, the human must have very much feared him.

Tabris dropped the antler, its mesmerizing, somewhat insidious hold over him having dissipated. The same could not be said for the dagger, however. Whatever mesmerism had curled his fingers around its hilt made sure that they could not let it go.

Yet the human’s face showed no signs of fear. Those dark eyes roved carefully over Tabris’s features, then landed on his halo and didn’t move from there, practically drinking in the silvery light. It would have been very easy for this boy to flee as Tabris stood paralyzed by the chokehold of his past self. The boy had time enough to wrest the knife away, or to push his trespasser aside and take the gun Tabris had glimpsed beneath the bed, end Tabris the same way his father had ended Adam, both of them succumbing to the sins of their fathers. Or, hearing Tabris’s gasps, he could have simply wrapped his hands around his neck and finished the job.

Instead, he sat up very slowly, the way a hunter does to avoid his target’s notice, fittingly enough. However, when he reached below, it was not for his gun, but for the shed. “This is what you wanted, right?” he said, placing the antler in Tabris’s empty palm like a reassuring hand to hold, an olive branch. “This is what you were looking for?”

“Are you going to shoot me?” Tabris whispered.

The human blinked, though very slowly. It seemed he wanted to spend as much time looking at Tabris as possible. “No,” he said. “I’ve never been able to kill.”

Tabris had the sudden idea that instead of killing the boy, he might choose to drive the dagger into the heart of his fear, his other self. It would be just as difficult and just as brutal, if not more so. If he could not let go of this knife, if his free will was taken from him in that regard, he might at least select a different target. He could never cut the bonds between him and his siblings; they loved one another too much. He’d never loved himself like that, though, and the odd self-mutilation he was considering didn’t seem so unappealing the more he thought about it. He could embed the knife so deeply into this other self that was smothering him that the resistance of the muscle and sinew would finally be enough to rip the hilt from his fingers. Could he devour its heart to make himself stronger, since he could take no physical trophy the way his siblings used to take from their kills? If he could not consume, could he at the very least crush it between his fingers, split the flesh open and scorch the seeds to prevent another self from ever growing to restrain him? The ichor in his veins surged just thinking about it. The animal part of him, the same atavistic connection to the earth that compelled his siblings to remain in their monstrous forms, awoke. For the first time, he could understand how one could kill for family, for love.

Then, the surging ichor ebbed again, and all Tabris wanted was for the human to take his halo in his hands and lift it from between his antlers. Then he could be relieved of the burden that hitched him to everyone’s expectations. Maybe this boy could lock Tabris’s halo away too, to take his antler’s place inside that trunk. It would be like throwing a precious ring into the ocean as an offering to exchange for one’s drowned beloved.

 _I’ve never been able to kill,_ the human had said, and Tabris’s mind couldn’t move past that half-second taste of his voice. His tone was the soft, coaxing one that humans employed when they encountered a gentle beast. It was the timbre that said, _Come here_ , to the motherless (or, in Tabris’s case, fatherless) fawn.

“Then,” Tabris said at long last, pulling his voice from the brambles of his lungs, “You are like me,” and he tossed the dagger aside. He dropped to his knees at the human’s bedside, grasped the human’s hand as tightly as he could before his fingers could feel the itch to reach for the dagger again. The human gave a halfhearted effort to pull his hand away, but Tabris caught it like he were a raptor snatching its prey out of the air. “I wonder,” he continued, “if that was the real reason I met you tonight, because our hearts share the same material.”

The human gave him a melancholy smile. “I don’t think they can. You’re an angel, aren’t you?” His eyes glanced back to Tabris’s halo for a moment. “You should take your antler and run back home; your siblings must miss you very much.”

The hand with which Tabris held the human’s began to shake at his siblings’ invocation. “Why should I run?”

“I don’t mean that as a threat. I know that there’s no way for me to hurt you. It’s just that if I had a family like yours, I wouldn’t want to leave them.” He nodded to the antler. “And now you have what you came for, so you ought to just go.”

“I did come here wanting to take these back,” said Tabris. “But I want something else now.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t even know how I would begin to put it into words,” said Tabris. “If you let me see you again, though, I’ll have an answer.”

The human regarded him curiously, though not, Tabris was pleased to see, suspiciously. “Can I at least know your name? Mine is Shinji,” he said.

Tabris hesitated, then after deliberating, decided that Shinji would be the first to whom he’d tell his real name.

The last Shinji saw of Tabris that night was a fleeting vision of him transforming back into a deer, wintry hind legs the only thing visible before he dove back into the dark.

Tabris’s siblings watched him re-emerge on the other side of that same dark, now in his human form. His right hand clutched his reclaimed shed. His left carried the dagger that dripped with the same dark substance spattering his clothing. The dagger’s glowing carvings were barely visible beneath the tar of boar’s blood that coated it to the hilt and covered Tabris’s wrist from the force he’d had to use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated Saturnalia-slash-Christmas-but-mostly-Saturnalia! (Also happy anniversary to the space gays.) 
> 
> So I may have played the insta-love card again, what about it? 
> 
> Title comes from [ "Deer Hunt"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=26671) by Judson Jerome.


	3. Thy rich inheritance of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just leave your window open tonight, and I’ll make sure nothing will happen to you.” 
> 
> “Okay.” 
> 
> “And then,” said Kaworu, letting his fingers slip away, “wait for me.” 

Tabris’s siblings seemed to be holding their breath for an undecided somebody to make a verdict. He looked around their circle, begging one of them to break the silence. 

Bardiel was the one who obliged. _That doesn’t smell like human blood,_ he said. The suspicion lacing his voice made his tone seem as poisonous as his blood, as venomous as his antlers before he shed them. Tabris could see the fungus-like growths that covered his skin were arrhythmically dilating their gills to express his agitation. 

The angels all hummed in agreement across their link. 

_It doesn’t smell like any other type of blood, though,_ Ramiel said, _and it’s been a while since we’ve been in contact with a human. Maybe Adam's curse changed the composition of their blood._

They all looked to Ireul, who materialized behind Tabris and began to circle him, taking in his scent. When she stopped before him, he looked her dead in the eyes to try to convince her that he wasn’t lying. He’d practiced ahead of time by staring into the boar’s eyes after he’d killed it, but Ireul’s were so much more unsettling. Below them were the tracks of tears she’d shed at Adam’s death, immortalized as permanent oily streaks in her fur when she’d been transformed. Her halo cycled through the moon phases in the space of a breath, which made it resemble a giant eye blinking at Tabris in skepticism.

An explosion of his siblings’ voices through their bond as they rejoiced let him know that he had passed the test a split second before Ireul announced, for his benefit, _It is the same human that stole the shed. His scent is there._ The angels rushed to surround him in celebration. Tabris was all too glad to rid himself of the dagger, and he didn’t fight at all when Israfel pulled it from his grasp, and he was lifted onto Sachiel’s neck like a champion being placed on his horse. Robotically, he gripped the pommel of the nearest antler tine before Sachiel took off, carrying him to a sacred pool where he could clean himself of the blood. The rest of the angels made way for the two of them before they began to follow, and as Tabris and Sachiel passed Ireul on their way to the front, Tabris could hear Ireul saying, only to him, _What’s going on in that mind of yours, Tabris? What are you hiding from us?_

They traveled to Sachiel’s temple, where they left Tabris to bathe himself in a pool of moonlight within. When Sachiel deposited him on the steps and nudged him upward, he was docile, disappearing without a word into the ivy-laden hall. The liquid moonlight poured out from his siblings’ halos was the only source of light inside, but there was so much of it collected in the pool, deep enough to swim in, that he could see the temple interior all the way to the furthest column. He hadn’t even dipped his toes in, but the illumination alone was enough to calm him down and smooth out the goosebumps on his skin that the nighttime cold had raised. 

He submerged himself, still wearing his blood-soaked clothes, into the awaiting baptismal font. As he sank down into it, he could feel its purifying influence cleaning every surface of his skin as soon as it made contact. His hands alone felt lighter just from the blood disappearing from beneath the crescents of his fingernails, a preview for the relief he felt when he tilted his head back and his antlers went under. Soon, everything on him was clean as a confession, and the artwork on his antlers was restored to its original ivory glory. 

It was quite the contrast to baths he’d had in the past. When he’d been a fawn, his siblings insisted on bathing him the way all the other deer did their offspring, cleaning with their tongues. Of course, the angels’ sheer size raised complications; one swipe of one of their tongues could knock him to the ground or roll him onto his side. Even after he was clean, and he fussed noisily at them for getting his fur wet, they kept at the motion, Tabris suspected, just to go on giving him kisses. Tonight, on the advent of his coming of age, he mulled over the polarity of these two experiences. Now here he was, left alone — momentarily, anyway; of course his siblings could never really leave him — to run his own hands over his human skin, through his human hair, shivering without the warmth of his pelt and his siblings’ attentions. The shivering was a remnant of his younger days, when he’d craved those attentions like honey. 

The intense jealousy his siblings experienced any time he gave his affections to another cut both ways, as they all discovered the first spring they spent as a family. Spring was fawn season, when new deerfolk began to join their ranks. Their white-freckled backs posed a curiosity to Tabris, though like Tabris, they possessed the same trusting eyes in the same vulnerable forms. And, like Tabris, they shared a mutual adoration with his siblings, specifically Zeruel and Ramiel. 

Since their transformation, Zeruel and Ramiel had become something like the patron saints of the deerfolk’s children. Come spring each year, Zeruel would shed his hide in preparation for fawn season. Normally, only his skull was exposed, with the skin that formerly covered it peeling away like the petals of a forever-blooming flower. Around this time, though, Zeruel’s skeleton would wriggle out of this opening, revealing his absence of organs or sinew and leaving his clean hide abandoned upon the ground. This he would hang across his back until it was time for the new fawns’ parents to leave in search of food. 

Before their departure, they’d entrust their children to him, and he’d shake the pelt from his shoulders, hold one corner between his teeth above the forest floor, and gesture for all of the nearby fawns to scamper beneath the tent that it made. He’d wait for the last of the stragglers to join, at which time their clustered grouping made them more closely resemble a nest of rabbits than a nest of deer, and then he’d pull his hide over them as if to tuck them in. This masked the fawns’ scents with his, keeping any predators at bay. But even when the parents returned, and their treasures spilled back out from the pouch of Zeruel’s pelt to reunite with them, the fawns would often return to Zeruel’s side out of appreciation for their guardian.

And while Zeruel cared for them during the daylight hours, Ramiel put their parents’ hearts at ease during the night. Her distinctive halo was a perfect beacon for lost fawns, and even at a distance she could often be seen patrolling the forest to round them up. Some nights she could get an entire train of them to follow her like a mother duck. 

At such displays, Tabris’s heart would clench, and he’d run to the nearest sibling he could find to demand their attention. Naturally, whoever it happened to be was powerless to deny him. _There will never be a day that you don’t occupy the first place in our hearts,_ they told him while lavishing their devotion upon him. _You were the jewel that completed our crown._

They repeated as much to him tonight as they bestowed upon him jewels of his own. After he’d changed into dry clothes and reconvened with them on the temple grounds, they gathered round him to hang strands of pearls on his antlers. His aquatic siblings, they explained, had been harvesting and saving them for years in anticipation of this night. Each of the pearls was a perfect, lustrous sphere to recall the shapes of their halos; Gaghiel, Sandalphon, and Shamshel must have combed through countless irregular ones to gift him this many flawless examples. He reached up and wound a strand of them around his fingers like he would a lock of hair, relishing their satiny texture. Then, the angels all took turns nuzzling him and calling him things like _the life of our world_ and _the brightest star in our sky_.

After his siblings had exalted him to their hearts’ content, they decided to give him some space, and then they all, save Sachiel, departed to their own corners of the forest. When the whispering rustle of grass beneath their hooves subsided, Tabris tapped on Sachiel’s leg, signaling for him to lie down to let Tabris climb up. Once astride Sachiel’s neck again, to show his appreciation, he stretched himself out and began to scratch the short, bristly fur covering the space where a soft deer’s mane used to be. As he did so, the pearls clicked against one another, hanging as they did like wreaths in the crook of his elbow. After he’d removed them from his antlers, he’d tried wearing them around his neck, but even then they still felt too heavy. Beneath him in the grass were laid out the two halves of his shed, a complete set once more.

“I can’t believe I’ve already spent so many years with you,” Tabris said. “Sometimes it feels like only yesterday that we met.” 

_It does to us too. Do you remember the first thing I ever tried to say to you?_ Sachiel asked. 

“I do,” Tabris said. “You asked me what my name was.” Then he laid his head against Sachiel’s neck as best he could without his antlers interfering. 

“Um,” he said, “Since you bring it up, though, and now that I’ve come of age and all, I feel like there’s something I ought to tell you. I’ve been holding onto it ever since that day, to tell you the truth.” 

Sachiel rotated one ear in his direction to show that he was listening. 

Tabris chewed on his lip a little, and Sachiel could feel his fingers starting to scratch a little less rhythmically. 

“My name isn’t supposed to be Tabris,” Tabris said in one breath. 

Now Sachiel rotated the nearest of his eyes to give Tabris its full attention as well. Tabris further burrowed his face into Sachiel’s nonexistent mane, searching for what little refuge he could find there before he delivered his next line. 

“It’s actually supposed to be Kaworu,” said Kaworu, and this statement lagged much more than the last. It was like the name was too bulky to pass through his teeth in spite of its delicate meaning. 

Rumbling tremors ran just beneath the surface of Sachiel’s skin, but no sound accompanied them. Sachiel said, _You’ve been carrying that around inside you all this time?_

“I mean,” said Kaworu, lifting his head up again, “it wasn’t really all that much of a burden, though. It’s as I told you before; it’s only something that I felt I ought to say aloud. I just needed to get rid of it.” 

_But why didn’t you say anything to us?_

“I don’t know. By the time I was finally able to talk to you, I’d been Tabris for a while, and everyone had already settled into it, so I didn’t think it mattered at that point. That includes me as well,” he was quick to say when Sachiel shifted in distress. “I’d settled into it, too, and I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t comfortable with it. And,” he added, “I _love_ being called Tabris, because it’s a name that you all chose for me.” 

Sachiel stopped moving, but it was probably more out of consideration for Kaworu’s position than any ease of mind, because he still let out a low, mournful vocalization. At that moment, Kaworu could do naught but allow him to express his guilt, using all four limbs to cling to Sachiel’s neck as he rode out the waves of sadness. 

When the noise stopped, Kaworu timidly asked, “Are you telling the others right now?” 

_No._

“Because I’d rather you tell them than I.” 

Sachiel was silent.

Kaworu climbed further up, minding the protrusions of Sachiel’s vertebrae in his famished-looking frame, until he was at the point closest to Sachiel’s ear. 

“You know,” he said, “from the moment I dug my way out of the ground, I can remember everything. And I can honestly say that the day you found me was the happiest day of my life. It still is.” He reached out to rub the fur on Sachiel’s ear, which was surprisingly soft. This had been a comfort mechanism of his when he was younger. 

“So don’t feel like you have to call me Kaworu,” he said, “because it’s from a time when I didn’t belong to you.” 

Sachiel took some time to accept Kaworu’s consolation before he said, _If that’s really what you want._

“It is,” Kaworu said. “I really didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s talk about something else, alright?” He snuggled into Sachiel’s fur. “I finally know what I want to do with my shed.” 

Sachiel’s ears perked up, which pulled them out of Kaworu’s reach. 

_And what is that?_

“I think,” said Kaworu, “that we should bury them to see if anything will grow.” 

_Are you saying that you mean to bury them with Adam?_

“Well,” said Kaworu, “I was thinking… maybe I should bury one of them with him, and then I’ll choose another spot to bury the other one. I’m not sure if Adam’s body would recognize that a piece of him is coming back, so I want to see if the antlers react differently depending on where they are.” 

_I think that’s a good idea,_ said Sachiel. 

“Do you think I should go to where Adam is buried by myself?” 

_That’s up to you to decide._

Kaworu thought for a moment. “I want you to come with me for that one,” he said. “The other site, I want to choose that place on my own, somewhere that only I know. But you were the one who found me with Adam, so I want you to be there when I see him again.” 

Sachiel swished his tail with pride. 

“I also don’t want to risk doing something incorrectly,” Kaworu said. 

Sachiel had been living with Kaworu long enough to know that was the tone of voice that indicated something else was behind his words. 

_What do you mean by that?_ he asked. 

“I mean…” Kaworu said, “I mean that… it saddens me to think that I’m likely the last of our family, and I know that that thought saddens all of you, too. Instead of Adam returning, I came to you instead.” 

_And you were a gift,_ said Sachiel. _You are a token of his love for us, and we show our gratitude by caring for you, by passing his love back to you. Someday, you will get to choose someone to whom you will pass it in turn._

Kaworu did not volunteer the information that he might already have somebody in mind. Instead, he slipped down from his mount, transformed into his deer form, and took one half of his shed in his mouth, waiting for Sachiel to accept his invitation. 

Sachiel did so, picking up the remaining antler between his teeth, and together, with Kaworu leading the way, they set off on their pilgrimage to Adam’s grave.

Once they arrived, they relieved six-legged Matarael of her post for a while, and Kaworu ventured his gaze over the precipice and into the pit where his father lay. The exposed half of Adam’s skeleton remained as clean as the day it had been when Kaworu emerged from its insides. It broke Kaworu’s heart a bit that, aside from its sheer size, it gave no indication of the magic it had once housed. There wasn’t the usual glow that surrounded his siblings and himself, no hum in the air, no crackle of static. In the darkness, even his antlers seemed like nothing but the remnants of once-proud trees whose trunks had been ripped from their roots. He hoped that if there was anything left of Adam’s spirit here, it would be proud of Kaworu for how much he’d matured since last they’d seen one another. He wanted to ask Sachiel if he thought that was the case, but a preternatural pressure was squeezing his body, keeping him firmly inside his deer skin. He sent his intentions out to the environment instead, hoping that they could mix with any lingering magic in the atmosphere. _Father_ , he thought, _I’ve come back to you._

Even though Kaworu was grown, the jump into the pit was still steep for him, so Sachiel lowered him part of the way down on his head. Kaworu both loved and hated to feel so small. He stepped gingerly around the bones, his tail tucked like he was ashamed of trespassing upon a holy site. _I’m giving this piece of you back,_ he thought in an attempt to coax out some kind of response, _to replace the one we took for the dagger._ He wandered around the skeleton, trying not to occupy the same place for too long as, alone in his thoughts, he agonized over the perfect place to bury his antler. By Adam’s skull so that their antlers could lie beside one another? Inside his bullet-splintered ribcage, from whence Kaworu had emerged? Inside his skull, which had birthed all of Kaworu’s siblings?

At last he found a compromise in one of the empty eye sockets, a place that he thought could symbolize the union between Adam, his siblings, and him. Maybe, if his antlers sprouted there, he would finally have that connection to them from which he’d been barred since the moment of his birth. Gently, he dropped his antler inside the same way that he dropped seedlings into their beds. Sachiel had been watching over him the entire time, and Kaworu was grateful that he didn’t have to break the silence to signal that he needed the leaves now. 

_I hope these leaves can nourish you,_ he thought as he covered the skull as best he could. _They were good enough for me; I hope they’re good enough for you._

He still had a large pile left over that he didn’t want to waste, and besides, he didn't want to leave this spot just yet. He pushed the remainder into a bed within Adam’s ribcage, where he laid down and looked up at the stars through the slats between the ribs.

_I miss you,_ he thought. _I’m so sad that I was never able to meet you, even though I know that if you were still alive today, I wouldn’t be. I can’t talk to my siblings like you could, but I know you’re always in their hearts._

He nuzzled his head against the vertebra closest to him, copying the motion from other deer he’d seen scraping their velvet off against tree trunks. _They’re not as impressive as yours, but do you like my antlers?_ he asked. 

Then, he thought he’d try asking something a little bolder. _Can I see you in my dreams sometime? I want to see the one we belong to._

He slept there inside Adam’s ribcage through the night, but to his dismay, when he awoke, there was no dream memory of his father. He stood up groggily and shook off the blanket of leaves clinging to his coat along with the morning dew. 

Back at ground level, with a lot of effort, he transformed into his human shape long enough to ask Sachiel, “Do you want some time with him too?” 

Sachiel gazed at him. His head was still bowed down close enough that Kaworu could see his own reflection in all four eyes. Then Sachiel’s eyelids shut and snuffed his likenesses out. 

_No,_ he said. _He’s not there._

_“Can I borrow one of your shirts?” Kaworu asked, although his hand had already wandered to the nearby dresser even as his attention remained on Shinji. “Don’t worry; I’ll give it back,” he said, when his eyes, so sharp in the dark, caught the confusion in Shinji’s expression._

_“What do you want it for?”_

_“So I can see you again,” Kaworu said unhelpfully. “Do you want to see me again?”_

_“Yes.”_

_As Shinji watched Kaworu bundle up the antler in one of his shirts, he thought about the cautionary tales he’d heard of deerfolk spiriting away unguarded children while they slept._

_“Have you told anybody that you have this?” Kaworu asked._

_He didn’t seem to be asking as an accusation, so Shinji decided to surrender the answer. “Yes.”_

_Kaworu looked at him pityingly. “Are you going to get in trouble if people find out you lost it?”_

_“Likely.”_

_He nodded. “I think it’s more than likely. It would probably be in my best interest to help you hide it, also, since I don’t want my existence to be known.” He crossed over to Shinji’s bed again. Shinji hadn’t moved from it this entire time, because the rest of the room seemed like it belonged to Kaworu now._

_“Don’t worry,” Kaworu said. This time, instead of seizing Shinji’s hand like he had before, he held his own out, palm up, for Shinji to accept._

_Shinji took the offer._

_“Just leave your window open tonight, and I’ll make sure nothing will happen to you.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“And then,” said Kaworu, letting his fingers slip away, “wait for me.”_

_“For how long?”_

_Kaworu’s eyes flashed in the dim moonlight of his halo. “I don’t know. I won’t be able to come into your house using Leliel’s powers again; she’ll know if I use the powder from her shed…”_

_“I’ll let you in,” Shinji said. “I’ll leave the window open, or the door. Just come back soon. Having you around calms me down, for some reason. It’s like just looking at you makes my worries seem like they’re not so important.”_

_Kaworu held the bundle close to him as though it were his heart parceled inside. “Ah,” he said, “but seeing you, Shinji, it opens up all sorts of worries for me. I’ve already given you my name, which has the potential to endanger me gravely.”_

_“I gave you mine, though,” said Shinji. “So it’s even.”_

_Kaworu smiled. “It’s not the same,” he said._

_It took a long time for Shinji to talk himself out of staying up to see if Kaworu would return. He’d just begun to lay back down when he and all the other villagers were shaken by the sound of a boar, its vocalizations amplified to suit its massive size, being slaughtered. Then, in every house but Shinji’s, people pushed any heavy objects they possessed in front of the doors to barricade themselves against whatever new creature could have done this. Shinji heard the noise and opened his window wider to receive the decoy antler Kaworu would throw in shortly._

_Kaworu, panting and blood-soaked, waited for his hands to stop shaking from the adrenaline before he began to wipe the blood away from his face with Shinji’s shirt._

Kaworu, in his deer form, and with the remaining half of his shed clutched between his teeth, ran as close as he could to the border between the forest and the pasture that would take him to the village. Eventually, he settled upon a hill that he fancied might be in line with the house where Shinji lived. Even though he couldn’t see it, in his mind he’d already begun to imagine a time when it might feel like home, and now he had the sense it was inviting him in. (Little did he know his feelings were based in reality, as Shinji had been leaving his window open every night since they’d met.) He dropped the shed and excitedly began to churn up a small plot of earth with his antlers, although he was clumsy from a lack of practice.

_You have yet to decide where you’re going to bury your other antler,_ Ireul said to him when he and Sachiel had returned from Adam’s grave. 

“No, I’ve decided,” Kaworu had said. “I just want to keep it a secret.” 

_Don’t you have enough secrets?_ Ireul lamented.

“I would share anything that grew from it with all of you, obviously,” Kaworu had reassured her. “I just want to have a space that’s all to myself. It’s the kind of thing that Adam would have liked,” he added to sway her (and the siblings who were sure to be eavesdropping) at the last moment. 

At Adam’s invocation, they’d reluctantly agreed that Kaworu was entitled to that choice.

The excitement of imagining all his future sheds bolstered Kaworu through the digging process, and though his small antlers snagged every once in a while on some fibrous roots, he didn’t lose confidence or even worry for his carvings. He only mentally apologized to the roots when he pulled them up, and he promised to put them back in place once he was finished with his work. When it came time to lay the antler in the ground, he took his human form. He was even bold enough to whisper a little prayer aloud as he pushed the soil back over it. 

“Keep him safe,” he said. “Watch over him when I’m not around. I hope you can grow into something that will protect him. I believe in you.” 

He ran his finger along the outline of his halo to gather up some residual moonlight, and then he traced a sigil of protection atop the mound. “For luck,” he said. “Pass it along to him for me, will you?” 

Growing up in this kind of environment, Shinji had gotten used to the idea that silence was really just the sound of waiting, and waiting was associated with fear. He’d never felt any ease at night, because everybody was collectively waiting for whatever new beast would emerge from the forest to terrorize them. But now, for the first time, Shinji felt anticipation. Waiting was thrilling. He’d become nocturnal, not simply awake during the night, but active and alert. 

He spent his time wondering if he’d really seen what he thought he saw. Had he, in fact, come into contact with an entirely new angel? It wasn’t as though he’d know what any of the existing ones looked like; he’d only heard of them through secondhand accounts (or thirdhand, or fourthhand, and so on), and even then, he’d had to hear them from people other than his father, because his father never wanted to talk about it. None of their accounts had included any such creature as Kaworu, though. Whatever the case, Shinji treasured the thought that this mysterious creature had visited him first. He thought if he made a paradoxical effort not to pay attention, he might be able to catch another glimpse of Kaworu in the dark, perhaps a flash of his beautiful white fur in the dangerous space between two lanterns, or a very brief sighting during the moment of a lightning strike. 

Shinji was so preoccupied with the new object of his thoughts that he’d hardly any reaction to the disdain in Gendo’s voice when he’d tossed the decoy to the floor and said, “This is just an ordinary antler.” After Gendo left, he placed the decoy underneath his bed beside the dusty rifle as if it were a charm for sweet dreams. 

_Come haunt me again,_ he’d think as he waited for the night that moonlight would fill his window once more. _I miss you._

It was actually the gentle knock on the windowpane that announced Kaworu’s return before the moonlight did. Kaworu was holding onto the edges of a cloak that he’d draped over his antlers because, he explained to Shinji after he’d swung his legs over the windowsill with his deer’s agility, he couldn’t have his halo giving him away now that he didn’t have the protection of Leliel’s magic. He waited for Shinji to shutter the windows before he let the cloak fall away, patting down his antlers as though he were securing a crown. Meanwhile, Shinji’s breath caught as the first tide of Kaworu’s moonlight swept over his skin. 

He’d heard legends about the deerfolks’ god and his children wearing crowns of stars about their antlers to mark their status. Allegedly, they acquired another star for each human they killed until their halos appeared as a perfect circle, at which point their godhood would be confirmed. Now, spellbound by Kaworu’s halo, Shinji realized that it contained no stars, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. 

Kaworu caught him staring. “That’s right,” he said, “you humans have been without the moon for quite some time, haven’t you?” 

Shinji nodded. “It went out when I was too young to remember.” 

“That does line up,” said Kaworu, taking the opportunity to bask in Shinji’s attention as long as Shinji basked in his moonlight. “It’s probably just as well, then, that the light from my halo is so diluted. My siblings’ would probably be too strong for you.” He smiled absentmindedly. “I’d always felt insecure that mine was so much weaker, but maybe it happened that way because I was meant to cross paths with you all this time.” 

“Is that light really considered weak?” Shinji asked. 

“Yes. It took ages to clean out your shirt with it. Speaking of which —” Kaworu pulled Shinji’s shirt out from where he’d had it tucked under his arm. He’d neatly folded it beforehand, and he smoothed the surface down one last time before he presented it to Shinji. “I told you I’d bring it back.” 

“Thank you,” said Shinji. When he accepted the shirt, he caught a delicate fragrance that smelled of rain coming off the cloth — the sunshower of a fox’s wedding. It was befitting of Kaworu’s name, he thought. 

“I have something else for you, too,” Kaworu said after Shinji had set his shirt aside. Shinji watched his fingers wander beneath the collar of his tunic, brushing the skin until he located his other gift. He lifted out a strand of small pearls, hooked around his index finger, and when he’d extracted it all, the whole thing was long enough that he had no trouble maneuvering it around and over his antlers. When he placed the pearls around Shinji’s neck, he was able to loop them around twice. They, too, smelled pleasantly of rain. 

Shinji admired them, but he kept his hands at his sides, afraid to touch. “What are you giving me these for?” 

“It’s because of you that I have them in the first place,” Kaworu said. “My siblings gave them to me as a coming of age present because I tricked them into thinking I killed you.” He touched a fingertip to the necklace. “Think of it as a peace offering. It’s a symbol of how we were able to shake off our fates, at least just this once.” 

“How did you do it?” Shinji asked. “I know you killed the boar, but what happened after that?” 

“I used the scent from your clothes to make them think the blood was yours. They believed me, but just barely. So treasure these,” Kaworu said, his voice laced with premature mourning, “because I can’t deceive them forever. I’m running out of means. And I love them too much besides.” 

Suddenly, he hooked his finger beneath the necklace once more, but this time to pull Shinji in until their noses were almost touching, and Shinji could see all the engravings on Kaworu’s antlers. “There’s something you should know,” Kaworu said. “If I come to love you, which is looking more and more probable every day, even then, across a hundred lifetimes, I would choose them every time. So I’m begging you…” His grip on the pearls tightened. “Don’t ever make me choose.” 

“I won’t,” said Shinji, shaking his head. “I won’t, I promise.” 

“Good,” said Kaworu, releasing him. 

“They must really love you, too, for you to feel so strongly about them.” 

Kaworu’s expression was wistful. “They do.” 

“What’s it like?” Shinji asked. “Being loved like that?” 

“It’s the best feeling. They’re always with me. Maybe to my detriment, come to think of it.” He looked up, pensive. “I didn’t build up many other relationships because I spent all my time with them. But I’ve never been lonely.” 

“I imagine,” Shinji said. He tried his best to tamp down his envy. 

“They even agreed to carve my antlers, just so that I wouldn’t feel left out when all the other deerfolk were having theirs done.” 

Shinji pointed to the engravings. “They did that?” 

“Yes. Every year when their new antlers grow in, the deerfolk choose somebody important to them to make the carvings. It’s like… a reaffirmation of their bond. My siblings have always done mine — well, I say that, but I’ve only had one pair grow back in so far, since mine grow much more slowly. Right now, I just have Sachiel and Shamshel’s carvings; they have to take turns, because there are so many of them, you know.” 

“What about the deerfolk who don’t grow antlers?” 

“Body art,” Kaworu said. “We make a special ink that lasts the whole year.” 

“What if someone doesn’t have siblings?” 

Oddly enough, Kaworu brightened a little at the question. “It doesn’t have to be siblings, or even immediate family, just somebody important," he said. "It could be a friend, or a spouse…” He hummed dreamily as his eyes appeared to shift their focus into the middle distance, or the middle future. “Maybe I could even have you carve mine someday.” 

“Oh,” said Shinji. He broke his own taboo about touching the pearls when he began to toy with them nervously. “I don’t know if I’d be worthy enough for something like that.” 

“Doesn’t have to be soon,” said Kaworu, running his fingers through his hair, looking like he was still lost in a dream. “It probably won’t be soon. It might not be at all. I think the moonlight might be getting to me…” He dropped himself into a chair, and he seemed delighted at the novelty of it. 

Shinji swallowed, thinking that he ought to take advantage of Kaworu's mood. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Yes.” 

“The last time I saw you, you said you had come for your antler, but you wanted something else now.” 

“That I did.” 

“And when I asked what it was, you said you didn’t know, but you’d have an answer if we met again.” He focused on Kaworu’s halo again so he wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes. “Now that we’ve met again and all, can you tell me what it is?” 

Kaworu placed his elbow on the back of the chair and propped his chin up with his hand to survey Shinji. “You remember it well. Have you been thinking about me that much?” 

Shinji shut his eyes. “Yes.” 

“It’s alright. The feeling’s mutual.” 

Shinji heard Kaworu sigh. 

“I want to know why my heart hurts when I’m around you,” Kaworu said. “And I want to know why it hurts in such a way that I don’t mind. Can you answer that for me, Shinji?” 

“I mean,” Shinji said, opening his eyes, “didn’t you say so yourself? We’re made of the same stuff.” 

Kaworu gazed at him sorrowfully. “Maybe,” he said. 

In the morning, Shinji stashed Kaworu’s gifts away in his trunk. Even though clothing was hard to accumulate, he didn’t feel like he ought to wear that particular shirt anymore. As for the pearls, he’d never even beheld real jewelry before, only wooden beads, so he’d feel especially odd wearing those. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaworu had said to him before departing, “I have more. My siblings won’t notice if one strand goes missing.” 

Easy for him to say, Shinji thought. Kaworu was surely used to love being laid at his feet. 

But he returned to the trunk not an hour later, took the pearls back out, and placed them under his pillow. Then at night, he passed each one beneath his thumb like they were rosary beads. 

At the same time, safe from his siblings’ prying eyes in his private corner of the forest, Kaworu laid his body, still human, across his buried antler. _Father, help me,_ he thought, _I can’t stop thinking about him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That final line was very Catholic sexy of me, if I do say so myself. 
> 
> Happy Palm Sunday, everyone! Don't forget that Kaworu died for your sins! 
> 
> Title comes from [ "To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43617/to-a-little-invisible-being-who-is-expected-soon-to-become-visible) by Anna Laetitia Barbauld.


End file.
